Janine and I are about to head out to the Left Coast for the bi-annual visit to my family for Christmas and New Years. We leave tomorrow for San Jose, spend a few days running around my old stomping grounds, and then head up to Lake Tahoe for a wonderful week of snow, skiing, hot tubbing and general relaxing.
I always look forward to Tahoe. If there was ever a place I would want to 'settle down', it would be there. The summers are nice, with lots of stuff to do like hiking or boating. Winter, however, is the season I cherish most up there. The smell is what solidifies it. The crispness of cold, clean mountain air can't be matched. Add a dash of wood-burning fire and a sprinkling of stars in the dark night's sky, and it's almost like a slice of heaven.
My bags are packed, and I'm ready to go. Janine, however, still needs to pack... blame her 3-hour nap for that one. ;-)
Announcing the latest arrivals to the Moore Family household!
Everything's a little cramped with the Christmas tree in the middle of the window, but in a couple of week it'll be outa here and we'll be left with the perfect living room. *Awww...*
Sorry for the cruddy photos. My camera phone doesn't work too well indoors, and the good camera is sitting at the bottom of Janine's purse. ;-)
Got a call from a lady who said she had a copy of my business card and wanted to talk to me about possibly joining her "ever expanding" company. I did a quick search on the phone number on Google (I LOVE that tool!), and quickly said "No, thank you," and promptly hung up.
Google's answer to my query: Primerica
So there's a power outage in my office right now. It looks like it's just our building, since nearby traffic lights and buildings obviously have power. But how am I typing this post, you might ask? Thanks to a back-up deisel generator about 4 stories below my window that is hooked to our VoIP network, and a battery-powered laptop, I'm still surfin', baby!
This weekend's trip to New York & New Jersey from my grandmother's 90th birthday was quick but good. Lots of family disfunction time over the quick weekend trip. The best part of the trip was hanging out with my sis and her husband in Manhattan. We got to see the newly remodeled Museum of Modern Art, and it was actually pretty neat. Driving through the city wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... I guess my practice in Chicago paid off.
The worst part of the trip was the flight back. We got to the airport 3 hours before our flight left (don't ask why), and after the plane pushed back on-time we sat on the tarmac in the plane for an hour and a half thanks to high winds in Chicago.
In the end, though, I'm glad I live in an airline hub city like Chicago. It lets me avoid stuff like this.
So I finished the latest Sly Cooper game, and it was great! After about 20-hours of game time it was good to finish the second game in the series. I don't know if they'll have a third installment in the story (I'm moderately doubtful), but here's hoping.
Another thing we're on the road to finishing is holiday shopping. We spent about 5+ hours yesterday and knocked off about half of the people on our list. We know what we want to buy for other people, and then there's still the select few that we're clueless for. Maybe a trip to New York/New Jersey this weekend will liven our imaginations.
So the replacement TiVo arrived on Wednesday, so I started setting it up yesterday and ran into an immediate snag. The very first time you set up the box you have to have it connected to a phone line. The problem - we're wireless. Luckily, our very friendly neighbors had an extra phone line and TV in their basement, and they were more than happy to let me come over and do the setup stuff I need. You have to leave the box plugged in for at least 8-hours straight so the box can finish plugging through all of the initial data, so I had to leave the TiVo at their house overnight. Soon we can start watching TV the way we're used to!
The best part of the whole evening was when I was explaining the concept of TiVo to my neighbors. At first they kind of blew it off as some hokey and geeky tech fad, but the more I talked about it the more they were interested. "Can it do this or that?" "It not only does this and that, but it can also do these crazy things and make a fantastic bur blanc sauce at the same time!"
I think I might have some future TiVo converts living next door.